A Different Perspective

I would like to bring in a slightly different perspective to what has been discussed till now in the forum. A negotiation need not necessarily be just between an employer & an employee, it can be between an organization and a government or an organization and its clients (say in case of a Project based company wherein the conditions of the contract have to be negotiated & agreed upon by both parties) or between an opposition party to a government and an organization also.

One very unique example which instantaneously comes to mind when we think of a negotiation between an organization and a government is the recent episode of Tata Nano in West Bengal. The agreement between Tata Motors and the government of West Bengal to manufacture the world's cheapest car in the state involved much more than subsidies on land and interest paid on bank loans. The government worked out a package -- which included tax paybacks and concessional power -- to match the benefits the plant would have enjoyed in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, both designated backward areas that attracted central tax concessions. In return Tata Motors pledged to flourish industry stricken West Bengal with employment opportunities and of course further scope of industrialization in the state.

But the interesting thing here was that the major negotiation(around which the entire fate of the project revolved) was not done between “the parties to the contract” but between a “third part” i.e the opposition party of Bengal in this case and the parties to the contract and all this was made possible owing to a phenomenon called Miss Mamata Banerjee better known as “Didi” in Bengal. Didi’s unflinching demand of 600 acres to be returned to the farmers ultimately jeopardized the whole project wherein finally Mr Ratan Tata had to relent & pull out the project of West Bengal and move it to Sanand in Gujarat. “The plight of the Tata’s here can be compared to say an employee who has had his final negotiation with his employer and is all set to join the organization but is not able to join owing to a failed third party negotiation say with a job agency with regards to the amount of money that agency would be charging both to that employee as well as that organization for that employee to finally join the organization”. This was one of those cases wherein an organization of the stature of “Tata Motors” was at the receiving end, at the negotiation table.